Are you afraid? Thousand Oaks killings.

tango said:

I know a guy who lost two fingers when he was doing nothing more than trying to fix a piece of farm equipment. He needed a piece of wood cut so fired up his table saw. The wood slipped, his hand slipped, and his fingers detached from his hand.

If you refuse to ever venture outside you're probably at least somewhat safer. Assuming you don't get taken out by a home intruder, debris falling from an aircraft, or die of cardiac disease because you weren't able to exercise. And assuming you don't use any sharp objects for any reason at all, avoid using electricity to be sure you can't be electrocuted, only bathe in an inch of water to protect yourself from drowning (cold water, because a gas leak might be fatal), live in a single-floor house so you can't fall down the stairs, and so on.

Sounds like a pretty dull life to me, essentially doing little more than hiding from the world and waiting to die.

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I've heard a lot of stories about farm accidents. When I lived in Texas, a young man was killed trying to break a horse. He fell and the horse crushed his neck.

Obviously, mass killings is terrible.... and they do SEEM to be on the rise (I don't know if such is actually true but it seems so).

In the USA at least, we have a very real and it seems fast growing problem with mental illness or perhaps just a rapidly growing inability to handle and treat this. Is this a US problem or international? I don't know. I HAVE been told by a policeman that it is now virtually impossible to do anything whatsoever about one who is mentally ill and dangerous - such has "rights" that means police can do very little.

AND we have a runaway problem with drug abuse... and we are responding to this by legalizing drugs. Addicts also have all these "rights" which makes it impossible to do much about it. And American society feels sorry for them and feels they need to be hugged rather than helped. It's an epidemic.

IMO, these mass killings are - in part anyway - a tiny symptom of these two runaway problems we seem both unwilling and unable to address.




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jsimms435 said:

I've heard a lot of stories about farm accidents. When I lived in Texas, a young man was killed trying to break a horse. He fell and the horse crushed his neck.

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Oh yes, some freak accidents just beggar belief and don't even need anyone else to join in.

I have a plumber I use for a lot of the plumbing work I don't feel competent to do myself. He does all sorts of things - plumbing, carpentry, cabinet making etc. The one thing he won't touch is electricity. He knew a guy who was an electrician who was working in a room with a low ceiling. This guy was tall, and bumped his head on a lightbulb. The glass broke, his head touched the live element and he literally dropped dead on the floor. You wouldn't think a qualified electrician would electrocute himself on a light bulb but sometimes those freak accidents just take someone out.

MoreCoffee said:

Afraid of going to places where shooters might attack. Afraid of being shot and wounded, injured, crippled, or killed. These are the sorts of things that happen with shooter's victims. It isn't a theological question. This is the "news centre" forum.

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The crucial element to this is considering the likelihood of something bad happening.

If you live in a run-down part of a crime-infested inner city area you know things are likely to get stolen so you take appropriate precautions. You don't carry valuables with you, you make sure doors and windows are locked at multiple points (and maybe put bars across the windows), you don't leave anything visible in your car etc. If you live in the kind of sleepy village where the most serious crime is someone running the stop sign because they can see there's nothing coming for a mile in any direction, you might be a little more complacent.

If you go to a bar with a reputation for violence during a contentious sporting event and make it clear you associate with one side, you're far more likely to find trouble than if you visit a bar that doesn't show sports at all and has a reputation for never generating any trouble. So you take appropriate precautions - either avoiding the location or behaving in a way that doesn't draw attention.

The chances of being taken out by an active shooter remain very small. Once suicides are removed from gun violence statistics far more people are killed and seriously injured on the roads than at the hands of active shooters. Yet here we are, talking about whether we should be afraid of deranged gunmen while people still get in their car without a second thought.

This thread has evolved a bit into places we choose to avoid due to a possible danger.....


SADLY, in California at least, there are whole neighborhoods that have been taken over by the homeless. These people are typically mentally ill and drug addicts - and thus are unpredictable and can be dangerous. They can entirely block sidewalks - on both sides of the street, blocking all pedestrians. The most famous shopping center in San Diego (and once quite a tourist attraction) had to close because the homeless were so threatening and so numerous than shoppers couldn't enter (it's going to be largely torn down and plans for an office complex are being made). There are areas where the shops and restaurants have closed because customers can't get to them. And it STICKS (urine and worse).... and there is drug stuff present in sight.... and there is disease.... San Diego spent HUGE amounts of money trying to get on top of the disease associated with these encampments. I understand the problem is even worse in San Francisco. And while they are violating MANY laws, the police won't do a thing about it because a lot of public feels sorry for them. Yes, there are shelters, etc., etc. etc. and many of those have vacancies every night, but they require no drugs and at times require that people agree to enter a program to help them and they don't want that. These areas are dangerous. Drug addicts, mentally ill, criminals are dangerous.




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Josiah said:

This thread has evolved a bit into places we choose to avoid due to a possible danger.....


SADLY, in California at least, there are whole neighborhoods that have been taken over by the homeless. These people are typically mentally ill and drug addicts - and thus are unpredictable and can be dangerous. They can entirely block sidewalks - on both sides of the street, blocking all pedestrians. The most famous shopping center in San Diego (and once quite a tourist attraction) had to close because the homeless were so threatening and so numerous than shoppers couldn't enter (it's going to be largely torn down and plans for an office complex are being made). There are areas where the shops and restaurants have closed because customers can't get to them. And it STICKS (urine and worse).... and there is drug stuff present in sight.... and there is disease.... San Diego spent HUGE amounts of money trying to get on top of the disease associated with these encampments. I understand the problem is even worse in San Francisco. And while they are violating MANY laws, the police won't do a thing about it because a lot of public feels sorry for them. Yes, there are shelters, etc., etc. etc. and many of those have vacancies every night, but they require no drugs and at times require that people agree to enter a program to help them and they don't want that. These areas are dangerous. Drug addicts, mentally ill, criminals are dangerous.




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It's reasonable for the public to feel sorry for the homeless but the problem, again, seems to be a deliberate blurring of boundaries by those with a different agenda.

When the police address the problem of large numbers of homeless people congregating in an area in a way that makes it impossible for others to use the area, that's a very different proposition to the police arresting someone simply for sleeping rough because they have nowhere else to go. But of course if the police clearing huge numbers of homeless people away can be presented as criminalizing being poor it's a convenient way to tie the police's hands.

With regard to homeless shelters, in many ways I can understand why someone might not want to sleep in a homeless shelter. It could be that they don't want to stay off drink and drugs but could easily be that they don't want to sleep in a dormitory with strangers where they have to obey what might seem like a lot of arbitrary rules, if the only perceived benefit is that they have a roof over their head before being turned out again in the morning. In that regard I can't help but regard it as being at least somewhat like the kind of shelters set up for people fleeing hurricanes and the like - you sleep on a camp bed in a room with a load of strangers, you have little to no personal security and less privacy, families end up separated (even if only because the husband sleeps in the mens' area and the wife sleeps in the womens' area), you can't take your family pets and so on - sometimes it's easy to see why people would prefer to just stay in their own home and take their chances.